ayah

The building is known to have housed hundreds of destitute ayahs and amahs - as Indian and Chinese nannies were called respectively.

Saraswati Naskar, 40, another ayah who lives in a slum in Kolkata and works in a government hospital, said she had to pretend to her neighbours she now worked in a restaurant.

“Weren’t we happy there. Take me out,” she tells the ayah, replacing her cup on its saucer.

For evening meals, the children usually ate earlier than their parents, with their ayah looking after them.

The vocabulary I brought to them had accreted organically, from books I read — “wizening” from D. H. Lawrence; “ayah” from Frances Hodgson Burnett; “crewelwork” from Jane Austen.